Complete Works of Cassiodorus, Vol. I

...he had to report all the words of Socrates in good faith. We would have gladly acquiesced to this most excellent observation, by which our Senator is purged of all stain, had not a small scruple still held us back. For he takes upon himself not only the province of an Expositor, but, as he himself says, of a Deflorator one who gathers flowers or select passages from authors, that is, he writes a continuous history by taking or rejecting things from three authors, now from one, now from another. That is certainly signified openly by the words of his which we have reported above, and still more plainly from the same preface of the Tripartita: We, however, he says, having reread their works, and treating each one with a cautious mind, knew that not all had explained every single thing equally clearly and subtly: but that now this one, now another, had expounded a certain part better. And therefore we judged it best to collect flowers from individual speakers. If, therefore, he collected only those things which he judged to be better, he must be said to have written nothing which he thought to be false.

I confess, indeed, that there are many things worthy of being known there in Socrates which Cassiodorus wished to teach his monks. But he could certainly have accomplished that without the loss of truth in another way, namely, by omitting Socrates, as he often does elsewhere, and borrowing words from Sozomenus, who treats the same matters but does not speak of the Romans; or at least if he wished to use the words of Socrates, he could have been silent about those very few words which speak of the Roman fast; which it is clear he did elsewhere, as shown by the single passage of Sozomenus which we shall soon bring forward. Since these things are so, perhaps one might not rashly subscribe to the opinion of those who will suspect that the place in the Tripartita has been corrupted. However, we most willingly leave our conjectures to the judgment of the learned reader; and thus we have relegated that reading, which has three weeks, to the margin, not so that it may be rejected by anyone, but so that whoever proves it to be more true may embrace it of his own accord.

We profess the same regarding another place in the Tripartita, namely in chapter 39 of the same book, where it is held from Sozomenus as follows: In which church, that is the Roman, neither the Bishop, nor anyone else, teaches before the people; most learned men contend that this is false, and we certainly do not see how it can be true. But how could it happen that the Senator omitted what precedes and follows, and wrote out only those things which he most constantly knew to be false? For thus Sozomenus proceeds after the words of Cassiodorus just cited: But among the Alexandrians only the Bishop of the city of Alexandria preaches, which custom they say was introduced, although it had not been so before, from the time when Arius the Presbyter, dissenting from the doctrine of the faith, introduced new dogmas. Cassiodorus omits all these things, though not more. To whom, therefore, will it seem probable that an Italian, writing to Italians, and an Abbot to his monks, would report from a Greek author things that were falsely thought to be happening at Rome, while deliberately remaining silent about those things which were occurring at Alexandria, even though they were true and most worthy of note.

Perhaps he would have guessed more happily who suspects that some error crept into the Tripartita through the carelessness of a scribe. Indeed, the codex of St. Theodoric reads dicit speaks instead of the word docet teaches; which reading makes an entirely different and most true sense. For there Cassiodorus treats of the canticle Alleluia in this manner: Among the Romans, they sing the Alleluia once every year on the first day of Easter, so that the Romans have it as a matter of oath, that they may deserve to hear this hymn. The version of Valesius has: that it happens to them to hear and sing this hymn. The Tripartita immediately appends to these: In which church neither the Bishop, nor anyone else, speaks before the people, the first Paschal Alleluia being finished. And that this was the mind of Cassiodorus will be proven from the fact that, if he had been dealing with Roman sermons or catechisms, he would never have passed over in fraudulent silence what was being said there about the Alexandrians by Sozomenus. Nor indeed would I deny that in the Greek history of Sozomenus is read διδάσκει teaches: but who would dare to assert that the text of the Greek author has not been corrupted? Everyone knows how easy the slip of unskilled scribes is in transcribing Greek; perhaps lovers of truth and antiquity will some day discover some trace of it if they come upon Greek manuscript codices of better quality, or at least they will correct it from the various manuscript codices of the Tripartita, which we were unable to have from other libraries where they lie hidden.

When Cassiodorus was compiling his Tripartita, he revealed nowhere, besides the names of the authors, any book or place from which he borrowed his words. For which reason, our work will be neither unpleasant, I think, nor useless to the reader, by which we have indicated in the margins the book, chapter, and page of each writer according to the editions of Christophorsonus and Valesius, where those things which are described in our Tripartita are contained. However, as often as the chapters are the same in both, having cited them, only the Valesian [edition is referenced]...